Legacy Leaders Know How to Fail Forward!

One of the biggest mistakes we make in schools is instilling a fear of failure in children. Failure is inevitable. No one is perfect. We are not born with all the knowledge, skills, and abilities we will have as a mature adult. Learning is a process of turning failure into feedback that will provide information for our next attempt. The only way a failure becomes a bad thing is if we don’t use it as a tool to help us get better at what we do.

Legacy Leaders get this idea and use it to drive continuous improvement in their personal performance and the performance of everyone in the organization. Legacy Leaders encourage their team to try things that have the opportunity for failure because they know that if everyone stays in their comfort zone, no growth or learning will take place! Failure is only fatal if you allow it to be. Even in the most dire situations, failure can, and should be, used to inform us of what doesn’t work and that another direction, tactic, and/or process should be used. Defeat only comes if we quit or if we keep trying to make unsuccessful methods work in inappropriate situations.

Inc. Magazine suggests 7 ideas for turning your failures into successes. I think these are very worth using for every Legacy Leader. (7 Powerful Ways to Turn Every Failure Into Success:How much you learn when you fail determines how far you go in creating success. By Lolly DaskalPresident and CEO, Lead From Within)

1. Mistakes are not a problem, but not taking the opportunity to learn from them is.

2. Be careful how you talk to yourself, because you are listening.

3. It’s far better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

4. We are products of our past, but we don’t have to let our mistakes define us.

5. The enemy of success is fear of failure.

6. Consistent action creates consistent results.

7. You can’t do it alone–and you don’t have to.

These are ideas that apply to you as a Legacy Leader and to every member of your team. Don’t hamstring yourself or your team by getting upset with any single failure. Use these ideas to help you and your team grow, learn, and improve. The ultimate success of your organization depends on it!